Apparently the line for government involvement is drawn somewhere between gay rights on one hand and Alex Jones on the other.
Wedding Cakes for Gay People
I think people who make free market capitalist arguments for letting the baker discriminate against gay people are very naive about how the world works. It's like Dave Rubin talking points, where it sounds like he's an edgy 15 year old who just stumbled on an Ayn Rand book and thinks they've figured out how to solve the world. Dave would have 2 arguments:1. A baker who pisses off too many of their customers won't be in business, so they can't discriminate too much.
How much is 'too much'? I'd argue any amount is 'too much' because it just shouldn't happen. The reason we protect minorities is because they are a minority - as in, not the majority. They on their own cannot shape policy or render a business bankrupt via boycott (and boycotts just in general don't work for anything... see fast fashion and child labor, etc). What we'd end up with is a minority constantly getting bullied with nobody caring. The only other solution is to ratchet up social justice tenfold, but half the country thinks we are getting too politically correct and Donald Trump is literally the president. That's not happening.
2. It affects personal liberty too much.
What about the liberty of gay people not to feel like shit in day to day life? Applying basic standards of nondiscrimination in places of business (ie, not kicking your customers out) is very little to ask. This isn't about your personal life. The same arguments have been used in the past to discriminate against black or trans people in the past. In the case of rights of black people, we had the civil rights movement which in part involved forcing people to serve black people and it made the world a better place. We do that, but for gay and now trans people.
One might have a better argument about rejecting the gay cake job if the cake is supposed to have a giant penis and asshole printed on the top of the cake. For the most part though, wedding cakes are just normal (albeit fancy) cakes.
Building Codes
The worst Dave Rubin meltdown for me was coincidentally also when he was on the Joe Rogan show, where he argued we don't need building codes because we have Yelp. It sounds like I'm exaggerating to make fun of him, but I'm not and that's the funny part. We need building codes because we don't want to live in a world where we have to be an expert on everything to know whether what we buy will kill or maim us. Buildings would be expensive to inspect and easy to scam with by cheapening out here and there and we'd be none-the-wiser. By the time a contractor is known to have a bad reputation, many people have lost their life savings in houses which are now worthless or even worse, died in fires or earthquakes like a third world country. We live in a world where people believe in homeopathy, religions, and vaccines cause autism. Do we really want to leave every important decision to individual research when people are this stupid? Do we also trust the contractors to be honest enough to think about their reputation long term, or will they fall into the human impulse of short term gain and go into another field to run another scam somewhere else? People are cheaters. They cheat first, cover it up second, and justify it later.
People like Dave Rubin generalize so much ("government NEVER does anything well") and push easy solutions (free market capitalism) when like many things in life, the devil is in the details. Theories painting a free market utopia are largely pointless if it doesn't work in reality. For people like Dave Rubin, one would be tempted to argue he is pushing feels over facts. For him specifically though I would call it 'Koch money over facts' instead.
We can even try to fix this within a capitalist framework like cap and trade, which used to be championed by Republicans... except now apparently they don't even believe global warming is real now? What the hell is up with that?
People like Dave Rubin generalize so much ("government NEVER does anything well") and push easy solutions (free market capitalism) when like many things in life, the devil is in the details. Theories painting a free market utopia are largely pointless if it doesn't work in reality. For people like Dave Rubin, one would be tempted to argue he is pushing feels over facts. For him specifically though I would call it 'Koch money over facts' instead.
Pollution/Global Warming
And finally, I have qualms with extreme free market capitalism when it comes to pollution or climate change. The idea that companies which pollute too much would be forced to pollute less for their own health or because people will boycott their company is ridiculous (the latter of which is already covered). This is especially true for climate change, which seems like an impossible to fix problem with negatives which come slowly and gradually, making it easy to deny or put off. When companies find out they can make more money by polluting more, they will pollute more. They care only about money, and if they don't do it, others will and have an advantage over them. This is a race to the bottom, but once we've trashed the entire planet at least we've generated good shareholder value! I'm sure when a mother's children died in the first earthquake their house encountered due to poor building codes and her husband died drinking poisoned water, she can sue for enough cash to resurrect all of them. /sWe can even try to fix this within a capitalist framework like cap and trade, which used to be championed by Republicans... except now apparently they don't even believe global warming is real now? What the hell is up with that?
Free Market Capitalism: When you have a hammer, every problem begins to look like nails.
